


White Nights

by kerlin



Category: Alias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nadia can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Nights

Nadia hasn't slept in fifty-three hours. She tells herself it's because there was never a time to start: not in the airports, or on the planes, nor in the endless stream of taxis up to and including their current vehicle.

She tells herself that, but there are any number of reasons she isn't sleeping.

Some of the reasons are tied up with the fact that she can't wear short sleeves. Currently, it's far too cold anyway, and even with the heat in the taxi going full blast she has her parka zippered tight. But even if it were broiling hot outside she'd have to make sure that there was fabric down to her wrists. The bruises are too obvious and too suggestive, dark purple in the crook of her elbow and streaked red along the veins of her inner arm. No one would think anything but that she'd just come down from a drug binge.

In a way, she has. It isn't like she hasn't tried to sleep; briefly, on the first plane, she had tucked her knees in and managed to prop the flimsy pillow up in a way that wasn't completely uncomfortable. But the moment she felt her mind slipping into a blissful lassitude, the images had exploded across the inside of her eyelids, and she had barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up every bite of the regrettable inflight dinner.

The doctor who examined her back in LA judged that all the elixir was gone from her bloodstream, but while Nadia had faked sleep he'd lowered his voice and said to Sydney that he wasn't sure that her brain chemistry hadn't been permanently altered. It wasn't like this had happened before.

For lack of any better term, she's thinking of them as visions, even though she's never really been into all that New Age stuff.

But Nadia, in the interests of full disclosure, admits to herself that the real reason she isn't sleeping is that she can't trust her father.

Arvin Sloane sits next to her in the back seat of the taxi as they careen through the streets of Moscow, and when he catches her looking at her, he smiles and covers her gloved hand with his own. She mirrors the smile without any real emotion and presses her forehead against the window.

She's spent too long sleeping in his presence, most of it a drug-induced stupor. He does love her, in his own way, but Nadia is no fool. Even her father himself doesn't know whether he will choose Rambaldi or his daughter in the end.

She hasn't yet told him where they're going. It feels like a small measure of control, withholding the final location. He has allowed her this, moving at her command from city to city.

They're close now. Another two days at most and she will hold the Sphere of Life in her hands and know whether or not her insomnia has been justified.

She hopes it hasn’t been.  


&lt;!-- InstanceEndEditable --&gt;


End file.
